Kobold Press Makes Its First Daggerheart Book for Gen Con

Kobold Press, the studio behind Tome of Beasts and the Midgard setting, is making its first book for Daggerheart, and you will have to be at Gen Con to grab a physical copy. In its Gen Con 2026 line-up, announced on 24 July, the publisher revealed Court and Shadow, a campaign frame (a ready-to-run setting and story hook you drop into your own game) that it calls extremely limited and sells only at the show while stocks last.

Got a regular group? Create a private community, poll for the best date, vote on games, and let your friends RSVP in one place.

Set up your group for free

Court and Shadow leans on Kobold's much-loved Courts of the Shadow Fey adventure, trading dungeon crawling for fey intrigue, dangerous bargains and dark fairy magic. The eye-catching part is what it is built for. Not Dungeons and Dragons, but Daggerheart, the fantasy roleplaying game from Darrington Press, the publishing arm of Critical Role, which launched in May 2025 and reportedly sold out worldwide within a week. It runs on a "Duality Dice" system, rolling two twelve-sided dice at once, one for Hope and one for Fear, to nudge players towards story over stat-crunching.

The bigger story is that established names are now building for it. Alongside Kobold, Eberron creator Keith Baker is bringing The Night Market to Gen Con through Twogether Studios, a micro-setting in the ghost-run city of Eidolon where you play a haunted hero out for revenge. Both exist because Darrington Press put out a free system reference document and a community licence that lets third parties publish their own Daggerheart material, the same open-door approach that grew D&D's enormous ecosystem.

Looking for board gamers near you? Browse local communities and find your next game night.

Find events near you

For now Court and Shadow is a Gen Con exclusive, so UK fans without a flight to Indianapolis will have to hope Kobold widens the release later. Either way, watching a year-old RPG pull in this calibre of creator is the real headline.

Sources: EN World | Kobold Press | TTRPGFans | Daggerheart (Wikipedia)